Monday, March 31, 2014

This is the next-to-last week of the main election for the World's 100 Best Types of Wine. For details on this election, read this.

Next week is our final group of 15 and, so I don't get cursed out from Italy unnecessarily, I will reveal that seven candidates are from there. This week, random selection pits Sonoma County against itself in what looks to me like a balanced group, difficult to choose from.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Views like this make Carmel the 3rd most romantic destination in the world, according to CNN

No longer just a quaint Republican enclave where visitors hope to catch a glimpse of former mayor Clint Eastwood, Carmel has suddenly become a great wine destination.

There are now 13 tasting rooms within a short walking distance in the cute downtown. Most opened within the last three years. There's good food, unique shops, a beautiful beach (though the water is frigid.)

The rise of Pinot Noir has played a role in the rise of Carmel as a wine hotspot. One tasting room staffer said, defensively, if you're looking for big Cabernets and Zinfandels, you've come to the wrong place. Monterey County seems finally to be figuring out where it fits in the wine world at a time when many Americans are ready to drink the wines it can do well.

I had never spent the night there, but when I was offered the chance by a motel with an interesting concept -- individual rooms have been decorated by different wineries -- my wife and I hit the road. It's only two hours from San Francisco, but Carmel feels like a trip somewhere very different.

Monday, March 24, 2014

We are coming down the home stretch of voting for the World's Best 100 Types of Wine. There are only two more groups of 15 after this week, and then we'll be at 90 wines elected, with just a correction/addition election left. So if you haven't yet seen your favorite candidate, it may be time to start wondering.

This week we have an interesting group, very exotic and yet focused on France, with 7 candidates from there (these groups were all randomly selected). No U.S. west coast wines, but we have our second non-West Coast wine. We also have our first (and only) two-nation candidate.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Recently I tasted a delicious new whiskey from Diageo's new Orphan Barrel program. In theory it was distilled during the Clinton administration, which is appropriate because I had a discussion about it with three Diageo employees (two live, one online) that felt like asking Bill Clinton if he had sex with that woman.

First, the whiskey: Barterhouse is allegedly a 20-year old spirit that had been sitting in a former distillery, Stitzel-Weller, where in 1961 (says Bourbon expert Fred Minnick) the owner bragged that no chemist had worked on the whiskey. We don't need your stupid science!

Stitzel-Weller was closed in 1991 for distilling, but is still used for warehousing, which is a big deal in Bourbon country because the heat and humidity of the warehouse have a strong influence on the flavor. Barrels of whiskey get put in there that don't end up making it into the blend of Old Fitzgerald or Bulleit, and they just sit there getting older. They are "orphans."

Bourbon is trendy, although it must be noted that much of the sales growth is driven by flavored Bourbons. Nonetheless, Diageo sees an opening for a limited production Bourbon with a great backstory. So it created some of both.

Monday, March 17, 2014

We are voting for the world's best 100 types of wine in 11 installments; this is the 7th. Please vote for the best 9 of these 15 wines. For details on this poll, please read the introductory post Vote for the World's 100 Best Types of Wine.

This whole 3-month election started from a wine-fueled conversation I had with Alder Yarrow of Vinography. This week is a significant one; we'll see if Alder's initial theory is shared by the voting public.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Philip James fooled a lot of media organizations with his hoax about a Miracle Machine, that would turn water into wine. That may not have been his initial intention. The ridiculous story was breathlessly leaked by a website that has a track record of writing stupid things about wine.

Yet the world media, which celebrates ignorance about wine, saw no reason to question the story.

First, a brief summary.

After foolingconvincing investors to put more than $40 million into a now-sputtering wine Internet business called Lot 18, James was looking for something to do with his time and golden parachute. He created a fake Kickstarter campaign for something called The Miracle Machine, which would make wine on a countertop in 3 days, apparently with water and raisins, that would be better than wine those fancy-pants winemakers could make with all their fancy-sounding varietals.

Just as he did with Lot 18, James tapped into a vein of people who prefer, even brag about, ignorance about wine.

I don't doubt that you can make wine in three days with raisins, yeast and water. Prisoners do it all the time in plastic bags in their toilet. What was amazing was how the media jumped all over itself reporting the story as if the wine might be good.

Even the food media -- most of whom would never lower themselves to eat a TV dinner -- never stopped to ask if good wine should require, at the very least, freshly picked grapes. A friend of mine, a restaurant critic for chrisssakes, called me a snob on Twitter for suggesting the wine-from-a-kit might not be that interesting.

The strongest current of ignorance runs through the site Business Insider, which broke the story. I don't know how bad Business Insider (not to be confused with the excellent Wine Business Insider) is at covering anything else; I don't read Business Insider until somebody sends me a link to one of its stories about wine. Every one has promoted ignorance.

Finally somebody showed everyone how terrible Business Insider is at journalism, and ironically, it was someone whose reputation it helped build.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

The term, that is. He went on a rant about it at In Pursuit of Balance earlier this week. He says "domestic" is a mildly insulting term, associated with household servants.

He says the equivalent would be to say "foreign" wine, rather than "imported." "When I first started making wine, Jack Davies at Schramsberg used to call European wines 'foreign' to make a point," Jensen said.

The term Jensen prefers for wines like his is "American wine."

Jensen says he has complained to restaurants that they should change their wine lists to read "American," not domestic.

"I ran down a list of our top 40 distributors," Jensen said. "35 of them used the word 'import' in their name. None of them used the word 'domestic'."

I think Jensen has a point. Words have power. I don't know if "domestic" still has the "Downton Abbey" feeling he's talking about, but when I roll it around in my head, it does feel lower in quality than "American."

Try it. Say it out loud. "Would you like a domestic Pinot Noir?" Now, "Would you like an American Pinot Noir." Try it with cars, with grapefruits, with any product.

Josh, you won me over: no more "domestic wine" for me, except in trade stories. But I don't care what you call yourself on your website, I'm not going to call you "generalissimo."

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Longtime Village Voice society columnist Michael Musto created a unique way of writing about gossip he'd heard that he wanted to report, but couldn't get officially verified. Rather than give answers, he'd ask questions.

In honor of Mr. Musto, a wearer of fine spectacles though usually in black, here's some Sonoma County Pinot Noir gossip I recently heard.

What four major Sonoma County Pinot Noir wineries are for sale?

Which of them just hired a new winemaker to keep doing the rich, powerful style? Which of them saw its winemaker hired away?

Which of them is known for converting to the opposite, a leaner style of Pinot?

Which of them was sold for big bucks not long ago? Will anybody pay the high asking price again, when it's mostly a brand without much real property?

Why all four at the same time? How much of the motivation is the desire to retire, with no heirs to take over? How much is the desire to cash in when people seem to be spending money again?

What does it say about the value of Sonoma County wineries in today's market? Actually that last one is more of a WBG question than a Musto question, but in his spirit I'll just let you readers answer it.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

After a brief cease fire for the professional wine writers' symposium, the war of words in wine criticism flared up hotter than ever last week, with a barrage of insults from the Wine Advocate for a tasting of leaner-style California wines curated by Eric Asimov and Jon Bonné, and later at least one lawyer letter.

Sadly, Robert Parker seems to have become bitter, trying to hang onto what he long believed to be his position as sole arbiter of taste in the wine world. It was pathetic, but no longer surprising, to see him upset about a tasting he didn't even attend. He wrote, "Any defense of 'different tastes for different writers' ain’t gonna’ fly either….they are alleged to be professional writers…and this dribble misleads their readers."

Please note that though the Advocate's lawyers sent Wine blogger Tyler Colman a letter demanding that he remove longer quotes than this one, I believe I have the right to publish it under the Fair Use principle. I'm not going to fight Parker in court over this sentence, though, so if I get a letter, I'll switch to a paraphrase. Yes, it has come to this.

Parker's outbursts have become commonplace, but it was surprising when Lisa Perrotti-Brown, an MW and now the Wine Advocate editor, chimed in with a wine-by-wine trashing of the tasting, which I'm not going to quote, because, see the previous paragraph. And new Advocate critic Jeb Dunnuck piled on as well.

I didn't go to the tasting, and while I deplore any writers threatening legal action at other writers, I want to try to stay independent at a time when much of the wine writing world seems to be choosing sides.

But I think I can explain what would motivate the Advocate to be so aggressively negative about wines other critics like.

Monday, March 10, 2014

We are voting for the world's best 100 types of wine in 11 installments; this is the 6th. Please vote for the best 9 of these 15 wines. For details on this poll, please read the introductory post Vote for the World's Best 100 Types of Wine.

I thought last week was the Group of Death, but maybe I was wrong, as nobody seemed to have difficulty making choices. We'll see about this week: lots of big names again.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Hannibal Lecter, in season 2 premiere: "I never feel guilty about eating anything." Words to live by.

A notorious gourmet, Hannibal Lecter is responsible for the best-known wine pairing in cinema history. In a new incarnation, played subtly by Danish film star Mads Mikkelsen, Lecter is the centerpiece of the best show on network TV, NBC's "Hannibal," my new favorite now that "Breaking Bad" is done.

In the season 2 premiere (watch the whole episode here), after a thrilling and brutal flash-forward kitchen fight with his FBI boss Jack Crawford, Lecter makes an exquisite-looking dish of sashimi for a meal with Crawford: sea urchin (uni), flounder (hirame) and squid.

The wine he pours for this dish is apparently a fake bottle. You can read that it's a Gewürztraminer Spätlese, from a German winery that starts with Ottomar L__.

I'm pretty sure there is no such winery, and the shape of the bottle looks like a California Chardonnay that the producers taped a fake label over. Bully for them: no product placement here.

But they do, clearly, want us to see that Hannibal Lecter serves Gewürztraminer Spätlese with sashimi. Since I'm a huge fan of the show and of sashimi, I had to know, is this a good pairing?

Monday, March 3, 2014

We are voting for the world's best 100 types of wine in 11 installments; this is the 5th. Please vote for the best 9 of these 15 wines. For details on this poll, please read the introductory post Vote for the World's Best 100 Types of Wine.

To me, this week is the Group of Death, because there are so many absolute musts. But that's just me: we'll see what you think.

Classic stories on sake

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